SWEET PERIL

 

          SWEET PERIL

“Sweet Peril” is a love poem by George Macdonald(1824-1905). He was a Scottish poet and author and is known as a pioneer figure in the field of modern fantasy literature. One of his best quotes is: It is our best work that God wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion. I think he must prefer quality to quantity.

In Sweet Peril he regards too much of love activities however sweet they may be as dangerous.

This is how the poem goes:

Alas, how easily things go wrong!

A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,

And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,

And life is never the same again.

 

Alas, how hardly things go right!

‘Tis hard to watch in a summer night,

For the sigh will come, and the kiss will stay,

And the summer night is a wintry day.

 

And yet how easily things go right,

If the sigh and a kiss of a summer’s night

Come deep from the soul in the stronger ray

That is born in the light of the winter’s day,

 

And things can never go badly wrong

If the heart be true and the love strong,

For the mist, if it comes, and the weeping rain

Will be changed by the love into sunshine again.

 

            For the message as also the moral of the poem, read the last stanza a number of times. Here “peril” goes, the mist and weeping rain become sunshine,  and things stop going badly wrong.     

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G.R.Kanwal

6^th December 2024